The Beryl project reunited with Compiz by merging with Compiz Extras to form …

CompComm, a compositing window manager for Linux based on both Compiz Extras and Beryl, has officially been renamed Compiz Fusion. The name was chosen by a quorum of prominent CompComm community members after a more inclusive approach to name selection "got sidetracked by a massive flame war on the mailing list."

Compiz Fusion, which has a somewhat volatile history, represents the controversial reunification of Compiz and the Beryl derivative. Beryl originally split from Compiz last year when a group of dissatisfied contributors decided to create their own community in response to the perception that Compiz developer David Reveman wasn't interested in incorporating significant patches from the compiz-quinnstorm branch. The acrimonious division fragmented the compositing development community but also facilitated rapid development of impressive experimental features within Beryl. Members of the two communities recently worked through their differences and decided to merge in order to eliminate the undesirable consequences of fragmentation.

Compiz Fusion essentially consists of Compiz plug-ins, scripts, configuration utilities, and other components that augment the independent Compiz Core. According to Compiz Fusion developer Kristian Lyngstøl, significant architectural changes that were made for the Beryl core are "either being scrapped, or rewritten for the Compiz project."

Compiz Fusion includes some highly impressive new features not previously seen in Beryl or Compiz. For instance, a stunning reflection effect has been implemented for the Cube and Plane plug-ins, and a new animation effect called Dodge causes stacked windows to slide out of the way when an obscured window is clicked and brought to the top of the stack.

I attempted to test Compiz Fusion using the Ubuntu packages built from the latest git source by Compiz Fusion community member Trevino, but I couldn't get the default window decorator and several major plug-ins to work properly. Beryl users shouldn't migrate just yet, since Compiz Fusion is still a bit rough around the edges. Despite the current bugs, Compiz Fusion demonstrates significant potential to reshape the desktop Linux experience.